Archive for the ‘bug’ tag
‘Assassin’s Creed Recollection’ iPad Review – Trading Wrist Blades for Booster Packs
Games that tie in to major properties are sometimes, shall we say, a little lacking. So you might be tempted to think that Assassin’s Creed Recollection [99¢] is just your average cash-in, perhaps a standard collectable card game with images of franchise heroes Altaïr ibn-La’Ahad and Ezio Auditore da Firenze slapped on the cards. You can stop thinking that right about now, because this game is something far more interesting.
That’s not to say it’s without its problems — Ubisoft has been chasing down some big-time bugs since the game was released — but Assassin’s Creed Recollection is more than just another coat of paint on the traditional CCG. It takes the formula real time, pitting you and your opponent against the clock as well as each other.
Once you get past the game’s peculiar jargon (cards are Memories, decks are Sequences, creatures are Agents, mana is Gold — it’s all very Assassin’s Creed), you’ll find a CCG with several creative tweaks. Turns are gone, period. Instead, everything is measured by day. You get one new card in your hand each day, and summoning agents takes half a day. You and your opponent do everything simultaneously, something that would get messy in your average CCG but is handled elegantly here.
You see, you aren’t playing directly against your opponent, who has no health or tokens to speak of. You’re sending your agents out to campaign in regions that dominate the play field. To win, you need to control the majority of those regions at the same time. If one of your agents finishes a campaign in a region without being opposed, you earn that agent’s attack power in points. Ten points and you control the region. So off you go, slapping down agents, throwing them in front of your opponent’s agents and claiming regions until one of you is victorious.
There’s quite a bit more to it — you can place Sites on each region that earn points every day, and you can also throw down Actions, which are used to interrupt enemies or boost your own cards. And you have to control your income, the amount of gold you earn each day, because every card has a cost and most of those costs are steep. It’s a bit complex, but Assassin’s Creed Recollections does a great job of walking you through the basics with a thorough tutorial.
Unfortunately, you come out the other side of that tutorial and slam directly into a wall. The first real mission in the single-player campaign pulls exactly no punches, and your default deck is more than a little lackluster. So, in a move that should come as no surprise to CCG players, you’ll probably need to buy some boosters.
To Ubisoft’s credit, they don’t start you off with a paywall. You’ll have quite a few credits by the time you emerge from the tutorial, enough to buy quite a few packs if you’re thrifty. They don’t do such a good job of explaining the difference between the inexpensive Templar packs and the rather pricey Assassin’s packs. As it turns out, they give cards from separate pools, and the Assassin’s cards are not so much stronger as they are targeted to advanced play styles. So go for the Templar packs at first.
The cards you’ll receive from these booster packs are sure to delight any Assassin’s Creed fan. They, and the game’s story, are largely pulled from Assassin’s Creed 2, and they feature plenty of familiar faces. The cards cover everyone from Rosa the thief to Rodrigo Borgia and every Assassin, Templar, courtesan and scholar between. They’re separated into factions, and while each of your decks can only contain two factions and the unaffiliated gold cards, you’ll collect plenty of each in your booster purchases. You can’t currently complete your collection with single-card purchases, but the upcoming Auction House sounds like it will address that problem.
The single-player campaign, which has you winding your way through fair Italia as an inexperienced Templar, will take skilled players a couple hours, and CCG newbies a fair bit more. It has limited replayability since you can’t continuously earn extra credits or experience by replaying old missions. At that point, if not before, you’ll need to move into multiplayer, where you can stomp friends and strangers alike.
Overall, I’m more than satisfied with the core game. The rest of the trappings are a bit less impressive. The out-of-game interface is governed by a confusing mix of swipes and taps, which is compounded by a lack of responsiveness in certain menus. Miss the fact that you can access the menu at any point by swiping down with two fingers (mentioned once and otherwise never indicated) and you may end up wondering why there’s no way to pause or forfeit a match. There are Game Center achievements, several of them, specifically for buying credits with IAP.
More damningly, there seem to be issues with the purchase of booster packs. If the Ubisoft servers are down when you buy a booster, you may not be able to open it until they’re back up. According to some folks in our , this may sometimes result in lost cards, though we haven’t been able to confirm the problem. I’m sure the server check-in cuts down on cheating, but it also cuts down on players’ ability to access the content they’ve purchased. Add to that a crash bug effecting existing players that was introduced in the current patch and I grow wary of recommending this game before these issues are ironed out, though a just-released patch looks to address some of this. Also, the game is currently on sale for 99¢, which might make it a worthwhile deal for putting up with some bumps in the road during post-release updating.
If you’re a CCG lover who also happens to be a fan of Assassin’s Creed, though, Recollection really is worth a look. It doesn’t add much to the mythos, but it makes great use of the IP. As a bonus, the short film Embers is included, along with a gallery of concept art for Uplay users. But Assassin’s Creed Recollection isn’t just for fanboys — it’s a genuinely engaging card game with a surprising depth of strategy. Hopefully Ubisoft will be prompt in fixing the bugs, but the core game is intact in the meantime. Just go easy on the IAP.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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‘Elite Collection’ Lands Friday with Twelve Games for a Buck
Back in late October we posted an update on ‘ coming Elite Collection (iPhone) and Elite Collection HD (iPad) apps, which will offer a bundled collection of classic Commodore 8-bit home computer games, as well as an in-app game store for purchasing additional singles and bundled arrangements of games. At that time, Elite indicated that these applications would be delayed due to a trademark complication. We’re now happy to report the studio has informed us that the titles will land in the App Store on Friday, December 16th, and at a one-week promotional launch price of $0.99 each.
As we detailed earlier in October, the Elite Collection apps will come bundled with the following titles:
- Elite Collection Vol. #1:
- featuring and also including
- Elite Collection Vol. #2:
- featuring and also including
- (a.k.a. Speed Buggy)
- Elite Collection Vol. #3:
- featuring and also including
- Additional 8-bit “Singles”:
- (a.k.a. Battleship)
In addition, at launch, there will be 16 more titles available for purchase through the in-app game store. We will provide full details of everything that’s available, as well as a closer look at the collection itself, when the apps land this weekend.
But, for now, know that some of the particular stand-outs include:
- Datasoft’s
- Palace’s
- Gremlin’s
- Alternative Software’s
- Thalamus’ visually stunning
Elite mentions, in their release, that they are committed to improving and furthering the apps in the months ahead, as well as adding to the titles available in the in-app game store. A few of the titles they name as planned / hopeful additions are , , , and At the time of the October delay announcement, (I, II & III), , , and were also named as titles likely to become available through the Elite Collection.
Many of the titles in the coming Elite Collection apps are also being released as stand-alone games. Their most recent round of releases consisted of Denaris, Paradroid, and Alternate Reality: The Dungeon. All of the Elite Collection games feature the studio’s customizable “iDaptive” control system, and iCade support is said to be on the way.
Elite Systems also offers the ZX Spectrum: Elite Collection for the iPhone as well as the iPad, which are collections of ZX Spectrum games along with an associated in-app game store.
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Hey CAVE Fans, ‘Bug Princess’ Hits on the 15th! Here’s a New Trailer
Last month, CAVE announced plans to bring Bug Princess to iOS. Details were vague aside from a teaser video and a “winter 2011″ release data. Well, this afternoon CAVE let the proverbial cat out of the bag and revealed that it’ll be available on the 15th as a universal app for $4.99.
My favorite part of the trailer is about half way in when they show the side by side gameplay of the different difficulty levels. I’ve never really been good enough at CAVE games to advance past the easy modes. Thinking that it’s possible for someone to rock out in “hell” mode sort of makes my head explode.
Bug Princess is just the latest of the plethora of games that are scheduled to be released on the 15th. Strap in, next week is going to be insane.
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‘SpellTower’ Update Adds Achievements And Universal Support
SpellTower [$.99] is one of those rare titles that come along and completely knock your socks off. Mixing elegance and good word game play, we recommend it to anyone looking for a good game, no less a good word game. And now it’s an even better value: version 2.0 of SpellTower adds in achievements and bug fixes on top of Universal support, for free.
Oh! And the price? You probably noticed that it’s lower, too. As of yesterday, the game’s price has been knocked down to $.99 instead of its usual $1.99. Deal! They happen! I’m excited!
If you’re still on the fence after this reduction, take a moment and educate yourself with our review of the game. Spoiler: it’s pretty good.
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‘Catball Eats It All’ Review – Physics Meets Fancy Feline Fun
At heart, Catball Eats It All [Free] does not have a unique premise. At all. At heart, all you do is battle physics with your thumbs to keep a fat cat rolling around big shapes and eating stuff. Sounds a bit boring, doesn’t it?
However, great execution is all about a clever take and excellent design, as fans of standout iOS titles will tell you. And if Catball Eats It All has anything nailed, it’s in presenting a title that looks so wacky that you can’t help but be drawn to its inherent weirdness and wonder what the gameplay will be like. It’s actually like someone chopped up a bunch of weird photos of animals on the internet and made playable levels out of them. And you get to play one too. You’re sold, right?
The game is very easy to pick up and play, with a basic tutorial that has you using your thumbs on the screen to move Catball left and right. Designed by Philadelphia artist , the levels are surreal, each made up of what looks like a series of images cut out of a magazine and coddled together for the weirdest results. You will roll over the surface of this hodgepodge object, collecting items and bouncing about (a simple press with one thumb while holding down the other button will make Catball inflate and fly around).
As you proceed, a small icon in the top right corner of the world will show you how much time you have left and how much eating you’re doing. If you don’t eat fast enough, a giant dog will appear and try to eat you. It’s a lot of fun to maneuver around these unique levels, and my only complaint was that the game didn’t offer motion control as an option, as I found myself tilting the phone when I went rolling this way or that reflexively, as if it would help me make it to that next platform.
Once or twice, Catball got stuck in a narrow passage. Could be a bug, I’m not sure, but each time I had to restart the level as I couldn’t seem to move. Mostly, the controls seems just fine, but it’s worth noting that it may happen to you too.
Especially considering it’s a free download at the time of this review, I’d say this title is a must-get for fans of platformers or something that looks a bit different from all the other ultra-cute stuff on the App store. It has that Katamari Damacy feel to it when it comes to eating everything, and I love that. I had a great deal of fun with it, and the Facebook and Game Center compatibility are a plus if you like social sharing when it comes to your scores.
The developers promise us new levels in the future (called “Courses, heh), and I have to say I am looking forward to the chance to spend more time with this unique title.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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Surprise! ‘Minecraft – Pocket Edition’ Will Get Survival Mode Features In Future Updates
Minecraft: Pocket Edition [$6.99] is cool, yet it lacks almost everything that makes Minecraft on other platforms pop — you know, crafting and monsters and all of that jazz. Thankfully, and as we all expected given ’s rich history of updating the other versions of the game, Pocket Edition is set to receive most of the meaningful game-defining features that its sister games have, either through a series of updates or a big one.
Daniel Kaplan, a business dude over at the studio, laid out an upcoming feature list on . As you’ll see, the list notes that a crafting system with a specialized interface is coming down the pipes alongside the introduction of animals and enemies and, most probably importantly, a new file system that will support all of this new, really promising stuff.
Kaplan also notes that the studio will continue to optimize Pocket Edition, which is great hear. Speaking of that, actually, a “small bug fix” is coming to iOS specifically in the near future. Neat!
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‘Infinity Blade 2′ Crash Fix Is Out
That Infinity Blade 2 [$6.99] fix? It’s out. Earlier last week, droves of users with fourth gen iPod Touches and first generation iPads were reporting nasty crash issues with Epic and Chair’s stellar follow-up. Epic , “Hey, we’re going to fix this thing” and it appears as though it has with version 1.01., if reports from our message board are a good indication.
Unfortunately, there’s still some bugs out there that this update hasn’t squashed. Some of our readers are still having problems with frame rate and game transitions in a post-patch environment, while others are still reporting a dreadful-sounding save file glitch that consistently resets progress when the game is restarted. We’re all pretty confident that, again, Epic and Chair are really interested in hammering out an update for these things in short order, but we’re checking in to make sure.
Regardless, if you or a loved one is having any of these issues (or more), feel free to check . There’s a couple of solutions in there that seem to be working out for some people.
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‘Mad Chef’ Review – Top-Notch Tapping Through the Restaurant World
Restaurant games on iOS tend to follow a certain template. They’re time management titles, all about organizing customers and orders for maximum profits. Sometimes they’re freemium, sometimes not, but they all fall in line, and that line is getting a bit stale. They are certainly not about wildly flinging knives at customers to spear ingredients for their meals in midair. And yet here we find ourselves with Mad Chef [$0.99], a frantic, imaginative take on the restaurant gig from Foursaken Media, the folks behind the outstanding Bug Heroes series.
Mad Chef doesn’t quite meet the epic scale of Bug Heroes, being both far more casual and far less strategic, but it exhibits the same thoughtful design and attention to detail we’ve come to expect from Foursaken Media. The game centers around frantic tapping, so you’ll have to get behind that mechanic in a big way. Once you do there’s a boatload of entertaining content to work through.
I can’t be sure if this game is going for the stereotype of the slightly unhinged artist, or if you’re intended to be in charge of someone who poses a significant danger to others. As your customers (who hunger for dishes like Pigeon Pot Pie and Ratwurst) line up, your sous chef tosses out a huge assortment of ingredients. Your job is to tap the ingredients needed for each recipe and throw knives at them. If you miss, you stab your customers or sous chef instead. Is this where our craze for creative food carts has gotten us?
For the most part, though, your customers are into it. It’s a rough life building your way up in the restaurant scene with nothing but Roach Bran and willpower, but each time you play you make yourself a little more money and hopefully earn a bit more reputation.
Once you hit certain reputation milestones, you can open four more restaurants, each quicker and harder to play than the last. That doesn’t mean you’re done with the old ones, though. Managing a culinary empire requires a personal touch. But the more restaurants you have, the more money you earn while you’re away — a mechanic that translates nicely from the freemium market to this premium game.
Mad Chef takes another step into freemium-style with purchasable packs of cash and reputation. They’re not necessary, by any means. You can work your way through the game normally, playing at your own pace without ever making a purchase. But the early restaurants are easy, and earning enough rep to open the later, more difficult restaurants takes either a lot of grinding or reasonably large cash investment. I can’t help but feel like the difficulty curve would have been better had Foursaken Media not been planning for an IAP option.
Thankfully, this is balanced by an upgrade system that does a great job of making the grind feel a little less grindy. As you earn cash, you can invest it back into your restaurants. You unlock new recipes, an improved sous chef, and more. These improve your returns, and your customers grow more demanding. The food cart, for instance, starts off slow — one order to fill while ingredients meander their way across the screen. By the time you max it out, you’ll be managing four simultaneous orders with an ever-changing list of ingredients, and you’ll also have to watch out for spices that increase the bill. It’s frantic, and each restaurant gets more and more insane by the time you reach their top ends.
There’s only one problem with that — the time the knives take to fly to their targets, and the related trouble of hitting overlapping items. The game is generous about awarding you hits for the right item if it can choose between one right and one wrong, but if both options are valid you might end up tossing knives at multiple ingredients only to have the game choose something unexpected, messing up the other knives you have in the air. It’s only an occasional problem, but in a game that rewards perfection it’s a frustrating one.
If you want to mix things up a bit, you have options. The Take Out restaurant is always available, and it offers an endless mode that has you toss knives at ingredients by category. It’s a good way to earn a little cash in a hurry. Every so often, you’ll also get a rush of customers. For these Rush Hour specials, you can forget about recipes — it’s all about spearing every ingredient that flies across the screen for huge combos, and hoping you don’t end up spearing a customer.
Mad Chef is an immense game, once you settle in and look around a bit. It’s also lovingly crafted. Take a look at the in-game achievement system if you want to see why I say that: the Game Center achievements are presented as awards on the wall of your home, and the more you earn the nicer your digs get. It’s a little, unnecessary touch that makes progressing all that much more rewarding, and that’s reflected in the rest of the game. There is often unexpected charm to be found.
In the end Mad Chef lives or dies on the joy of tapping. It does a great job with its simple mechanic, veering away from simple spamming to something that takes a lot of thought and attention. And, you know, crazy-fast tapping. It’s a lot of game for your buck, so check it out. Then swing by our to let us know what you think.
TouchArcade Rating: 
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New Trailer and Screens for Upcoming ‘Lunar Racer’
You might remember that way back in June we took a look at Super Stickman Golf [99¢] developer ‘ current project, called Lunar Racing at the time. This multiplayer-centric 2D side-scrolling racing game looked like it had all sorts of promise, especially considering how well Noodlecake nailed the multiplayer aspect of Super Stickman Golf. But, it’s been nearly six months and I’d started wondering just what the heck was going on with the development.
Well Noodlecake must have sensed my curiosity, because recently they sent over some new details and have released a trailer for their new game, now with the slightly adjusted title of Lunar Racer. Gameplay will involve racing against 3 other vehicles on each of our solar system’s moons. Each vehicle auto-accelerates at the same speed, so everybody is on equal footing. The key to doing well is performing tricks as you race to fill up your nitro boost, so the racer who can pull off the best stunts and land their jumps the cleanest will have more boost to surge ahead of the pack with.
There will also be a combat element to Lunar Racer, which is another way to gain advantages during a race. You’ll be able to collect a selection of powerups like missiles, shields,mines, and then unleash them on your opponents similar to the Mario Kart games. In fact, the select few who have been testing early versions of the game describe Lunar Racer as Tiny Wings meets Mario Kart and Death Rally. Sounds pretty good to me! Check out the trailer below for a glimpse into the gameplay.
At this point, none of the details for Lunar Racer are completely set in stone, so it’s possible there’s more facets to the gameplay that are still yet to materialize. But what I’ve seen so far definitely looks cool. With any luck the game will be ready to go in the next month or two, and we’ll definitely be keeping tabs on any new details. In related Noodlecake news, the superb Super Stickman Golf has just received a large update that adds 6 brand new courses, a new leaderboard and 100 points worth of achievements, and of course some ever important bug fixes. Make sure to check out the new update to Super Stickman Golf and keep your eyes peeled for some more Lunar Racer news soon.
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‘Squids’ Update With Universal (and 3D) Support
You wanted it, and now it’s here: ’s beautiful real-time strategy RPG, Squids [$1.99], is now on the iPad. The team dropped the support as Universal, which means if you already own it, you can now play the game on iPad for $0. Otherwise, you can pick up the iPad and iPhone version for the usual $1.99.
During review, we got a chance to see Squids on the big screen, and even that non-optimized state, we were really impressed with how it looked and technically played. But here’s some things we didn’t get to see: the new 3D “anaglyph” version of the Halloween map, which has been rolled into this update on top of screen rotation functionality, new bug fixes, and new localizations including Russian, Japanese, and simplified Chinese.
If you’ve got some of those silly 3D glasses, give the Halloween map a spin and tell us what you think. We’re currently digging around in TouchArcade’s toy box, but we’ve been coming up empty.
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